Over history, payment for goods or services has taken many forms including: precious metals, cash, checks, credit, debit and charge cards. More recently, various forms of electronic currency or scrip contained in some form of electronic card or module or maintained in an electronic purse or wallet on a computer device have joined the fray, vying against more established and accepted payment methods for acceptance.
Precious metals and cash, because they are fungible, untraceable, and immediately usable by the bearer in possession, are readily acceptable forms of payment within national borders and across national borders if, in the case of cash, the cash is in a highly regarded or trusted stable national currency. However, to be used they must be physically exchanged. This creates problems of storage and loss. Furthermore, their untraceability makes them less suitable as gifts unless the giver and recipient are both present at the transfer or make use of some intermediary to transfer the gift, although doing so increases the chance of loss and may involve additional transaction costs for the delivery, insurance or verification of receipt.
Checks are most commonly employed for gift giving, because they are less fungible and provide traceability. However, a recipient of a check can not widely use the check as received, due to the increased exposure to loss posed by accepting a “third party” check. Furthermore, although checks may be written for any specific amount up to the amount available in the account backing the check, checks have very limited transferability and must be supplied from a physical inventory. Paper-based checking systems do not offer sufficient relief from the limitations of cash transactions, sharing many of the inconveniences of handling currency while adding the inherent delays and transaction costs associated with the processing of checks before and after use.
In the past few decades, payment cards in the form of credit, debit and charge cards have had great success in shifting the preferred method of payment in many segments of commerce, at the individual level, away from the use of cash and checks. However, obtaining a credit or charge card requires the person seeking the card to prove a level of credit worthiness, since payment for goods and/or services purchased today with the card will not be made until some time in the future. Alternatively, people lacking sufficient creditworthiness, due to age, employment status or income level, could obtain a credit card if it was secured by a bank account and the usable credit line was linked to the amount in the account. Unfortunately, in many instances, it was difficult for people to put aside a sufficient amount of money in the bank account to make the secured credit card really useful. Furthermore, credit cards must physically be made sufficiently durable because they are not typically single use vehicles of commerce. Hence, the infrastructure associated with the creation, distribution and validation of receipt of the cards can impose significant costs.
Debit cards appear similar to credit cards from the use standpoint, however, like secured credit cards, debit cards require sufficient money to be available in an account or a transaction involving the card will not be approved.
Charge cards are like regular credit cards in that they are unsecured, however they differ in the payment requirements.
Predecessors and variants of credit, debit and charge cards are store or chain specific charge plates and travel and entertainment cards. However, in addition to having the drawbacks of more general use cards, the have the further disadvantage due to the limitations imposed by their specialized or local nature.
None of the aforementioned types of cards have been suitable gifts in the physical presentment context for a number of reasons. Since the line of credit, or funds balance in the backing account, of the owner was at stake, presenting a recipient with one of the above cards requires a high degree of trust in the recipient. Additionally, at some point, the card must be given back to the owner. Moreover, once given, the owner generally loses the use of the card while it is in the possession of the recipient. Of course, once given, the owner could also exert no control over its use beyond taking the additional step of canceling the card account and incurring the associated inconvenience of opening, or transferring to, a new account. Still further, by adding an additional level of separation between the owner and the card, if the card was lost, the time delay in noticing a loss of the card and informing the owner could be costly .in time, inconvenience and/or funds. Also, to use the card, the possessor of the card must be dishonest and misrepresent him/herself as the cardholder. Last, and probably of greatest importance, due to merchant liability concerns regarding fraud, merchants accepting payment using one of those cards, for example by mail order/telephone order (MOTO), i.e. without physical presentation of the card, will generally not ship goods to any address other than the billing address for the card, further restricting use of the card by anyone other than the registered cardholder.
The internet, a series of thousands of computer networks around the world, has recently gained substantial popularity due to its promise of providing connectivity between so many computer users with functionality such as electronic mail, file transfer, and remote login. The customer base of internet users is expanding by the thousands and more businesses are discovering the marketing opportunities and advantages available on the “net.” The World Wide Web, or Web, is an interface to the internet which provides for easier access to information, goods and services.
In the business arena, a merchant can, with an internet address (also called a URL) and a hypertext editor, develop a hypertext document called a “home page” (or “virtual storefront”) which can be presented (i.e. displayed) to a user when he connects to the merchant's Web server over the Web via the URL or a link or pointer thereto. That home page may provide descriptions of products and services through the use of media such as graphic images, sound, and hypertext link choices. The information allows the consumer to find the product or service he desires to purchase from his computer, as well as comparison or price shop. The result is an easily accessible system for purchasing anything from articles, pictures and advice to plumbing supplies, skis and tickets.
The rapid expansion of the internet, coupled with the absence of commonly accepted online payment schemes have caused many merchants with an internet presence to transact business over the internet as if it was a MOT0 transaction. However, a reluctance on the part of payment card holders to send their payment card information over the internet has resulted in both lost sales and a concerted but widely varying attempt to enhance communications security or address the perceived lack thereof on the part of cardholders.
Thus, when the aforementioned risks regarding giving the use of one's debit/charge/credit card as a gift are coupled with the public perception regarding the security of data transmission over the internet, the giving of one's debit/charge/credit card as a gift becomes even less desirable in the internet context.
Recently, various forms of stored value cards have been proposed and implemented, most commonly containing or being a machine readable stripe or some form of electronic circuitry which can store “value” or some representation thereof on the stripe or in the circuitry. As presently understood however, in order to be used, the card must be physically present so that the stored information on the card can be read and altered as part of the transaction, either through contact with, or being in proper proximity to a compatible access device. Thus, if lost, most likely so is the associated stored value. Furthermore, their use is greatly restricted by compatibility and acceptability problems since any usage is limited by the value “on” the card and/or the expiration date (if any). Also, they must be physically transferred to be used. An example of such a card which is specifically designed for the gift context is known as e-Gift, offered by, or on behalf of, American Express®.
The e-Gift card however has a number of drawbacks. First, although it replaces a physical gift certificate, as a stored value card it must nonetheless be physically present to be used. It further has the associated creation, delivery and distribution costs.
Another example specifically usable as a gift is the Mastercard Gift Card from MasterCard International which operates like a debit card. The person who buys the gift card pays a sum of money which becomes the available value which may be used when the card is used. The MasterCard gift card thus has similar drawbacks present with any other debit card, including that it must be physically issued and provided and can not be activated until physically received by the recipient.
More recently, totally electronic cash transactions have gained desirability and are becoming somewhat popular. This is due to the ability to allow individuals to conduct purchase transactions on the interne. The advent of electronic cash transactions has aided an increase in the popularity of electronic shopping. Electronic shopping on the interne appears to be the wave of the future and may well overtake, if not replace, much of today's paper catalog shopping and perhaps ultimately forms of in-person shopping. However, it will likely take a long time for that wave to truly hit the shore. Many necessary or popular businesses have limited or no internet presence, and there is still a great reluctance among the general population in the United States to transact business over the internet using forms of electronic money not endorsed or backed by the U.S. government. Furthermore, the electronic data makeup of the various electronic money schemes are too incompatible with each other to be freely exchangeable with each other. Furthermore, due to their incompatibility, merchants' costs increase because they must add an acceptance infrastructure for each such “currency” they wish to accept over and above any existing infrastructure to which they belong and may incur transaction costs to “cash in” the electronic money or to “convert” to official U.S. currency.
Furthermore, in many cases, electronic money is transferred in denominations of fractions of a U.S. penny. Since those fractions are not recognized currencies of exchange large amounts may need to be accumulated before they can meaningfully and cost effectively be converted to U.S. dollars.
Among the better known electronic “money” related schemes are First Virtual, Collect All Relevant Information (CARD, CyberCash, Electronic Checks, NetBill, NetCheque, Ecash, DigiCash, NetCash, CyberCoin, Millicent, SubScript, PayWord, MicroMint, Mondex, and e-Gold.
Nonetheless, within the digital money community, for the most part, the chief concern that exists with financial transactions on the internet is security and privacy concerns resulting from the ease in intercepting, and the readable nature of, the electronic information being transferred. As messages move across the internet, they can, and often do, pass through many numbers of computers, any one of which can be utilized to intercept the messages for dishonest purposes. To address security concerns, current electronic commerce solutions generally employ encryption techniques and many require further techniques to prevent the possibility of reuse or double spending. In fact, almost all electronic cash transaction schemes depend on encryption for privacy and security enforcement. Furthermore, electronic money is more “unstable” in most instances than unstable national currencies, because unlike a country's currency, a “coiner” or “authenticator” of electronic money can disappear overnight with all its assets thereby rendering any outstanding “scrip” or “coinage” unusable by holders for any purpose. Thus, while sophisticated business may be willing to adopt the use of electronic money schemes among themselves, those problems, and the public perceptions thereof, are not conducive to forming a comfortable gift giving environment between individuals.
Finally, gift certificates and gift checks are widely used for gift giving. However, most are merchant (or merchant group) specific. Those that are available on the internet are generally usable solely on the internet or, to prevent widespread counterfeiting, require sanctioned printing and physical delivery to the recipient as well as physical presentation by the recipient to be used. Furthermore, redemption may place a special burden on merchants, due to the infrequency of receipt (and hence lack of knowledge of how to handle acceptance) or by imposition of redemption charges or special redemption procedures which must be followed by the merchant in order to be credited with the appropriate funds.
Thus, none of the above provide a cost favorable, overhead favorable, sufficiently convenient, widely acceptable way to give a gift which offer advantages for the purchaser, recipient and merchant.